Ed Howarth is Programme Delivery Lead for Power to Change supporting community businesses. In particular Ed has championed the need for strengthening community businesses through digital. Ed shares insights on the role of funders in supporting digital across the sector, and indeed the challenge he has found in managing digital change.
Ed was co-founder of Tech for Good Bristol which was subsequently merged to become and Tech for Good South West. Ed shares his passion for the network and the role it has to play supporting charities.
Follow Ed's Medium page for regular work notes and further discussion of the topics raised during our conversation.
Transcript
Annie Legge 0:00
Hi, and welcome to the Tech for Good southwest podcast. My name is Annie legge, your podcast host, and I'm here today with Ed Howard from power to change. Hi, Ed. It would be great if you can just introduce yourself a little bit about your background and a little bit about power to change.
Ed Howarth 0:18
Thanks, Annie. Yeah, so I'm adhaalath power to change. I'm the capabilities Delivery Manager, supporting community businesses, which I'm sure we'll touch on in a bit what that actually means. My background is prior to working in power to change, I was very heavily involved in the voluntary and community sector in Bristol. And then kind of previous that with capabilities work working with small community organisations across Wales and also Sub Saharan Africa. So that's kind of my background for the last 1015 years.
Annie Legge 0:52
Amazing. Can you just explain what a community business is? Yes, I
Ed Howarth 0:56
can. So community business has power to change sees a community business is an organisation that is locally rooted, so it works within a local area. So if that were a city, maybe a couple of constituencies, if it were a rural area, it might be a couple of villages. So it's a it's locally rooted in an area. It's accountable to the local people. So local people have influence in decision making of that business, either via advisory boards, fire ownership, fire the governance model they have. So there's a lot of control from the local community. The fourth, the third area is that it's a trading organisation. So it has products and services that it uses to generate income and provide services for the community. And the fourth is that it has a broad social impact. So it's open to all to work with the community there. And so a good example might be Bristol, Ferris in Bristol, some people might know that or when we're Hill city far, Eastern community centre to give you a few ideas
Annie Legge 1:57
and power to change. Can you explain how power to change support community business?
Ed Howarth 2:03
So power to change came about around eight or nine years ago with an endowment fund from the lottery, to support community businesses, and in a wide area of kind of work strands, ranging from big funding programmes, to capacity support programmes to research there was a research institute developing the kind of the research knowledge and case for support for this type of economy
Annie Legge 2:31
and power to change support community businesses, obviously, not just in Bristol across the UK. Is that right?
Ed Howarth 2:36
And we're England only. So we swapped communities across England.
Annie Legge 2:40
And so one of the things I know that we've talked about before Ed is the role that power to change is also playing in terms of supporting community organisations or community businesses around digital. Can you explain a little bit about what that means in your world in terms of what how digital can support community businesses,
Ed Howarth 3:01
support to community businesses around digital is relatively new for power to change, I guess a lot of our work up until sort of pandemic time. So 2020 was very focused on supporting community businesses, acquire assets, develop assets, develop their business models, help them start up. So kind of more generalists, organisation or business development support. As we all experienced, in many experience, the pandemic kind of threw digital into a very sharp focus and our research at that time and, and sort of following the pandemic was that community businesses that that were most digitally literate and most advanced digitally, were the ones that had the most resilience during the pandemic. And so, it was our intention to build on that understanding and to start to provide directed support towards community businesses around their their digital needs, but very much within the system of an organisation. So we wanted to try and move away from we've got a digital programme supporting digital work, it was more like help community businesses understand where they're at on their digital journey, and fit that within the sort of holistic organisational journey that they are on as well.
Annie Legge 4:19
So in terms of supporting community businesses around digital, how do you practically do that?
Ed Howarth 4:25
So the programme that we developed, which we co designed with partners through the Catalyst network, we looked at what the support needs were and how we could then design a programme to meet those needs. So we went through a design process nearly 24 months ago now.
I think some of the big sort of pain points that came out in that design process was time and space to actually deliver digital work and have the space to think what is really needed to fit with the organisation and the organization's needs and the demands on them so, it was quite surprising in some ways, because often you come out, oh, we need technical people, we need designers, we need web developers. And what was coming back was, we need the time and space to be able to think about what we need and why we need what we need.
So as a result of that, the programme design was designed with people supporting people who came onto the programme, who we call community business connectors, who I describe as kind of expert, organisational generalists. So they have a very good broad often run community businesses themselves, so their peers to a greater or lesser extent. They have a great understanding of organisations and organisational growth and business development, but they're not digital specialists. In order to sort of complement that gap in their skills, and ensure that the digital was kind of combined into the system of the organisation, we also had digital leads, who did have specialisms to support the connectors and the community businesses on the programme, to work through the understanding of what the problems they were looking to resolve, and how might digital help to resolve those.
So it's kind of a bit of a multi kind of pronged approach, and also providing space and time for them to help go through that thinking, which is quite a big task when you're faced with also delivering and continue to run an organisation. So a lot of the time is about developing the trust and the relationships to help people go through the process. That's quite hard. So I think that's kind of the model we've used.
Annie Legge 6:35
So essentially, the digital leads are really providing that space for mentoring and support to the connectors but to the organization's themselves. But I'm interested in that we've talked about this before, generally and in other episodes as well, I mean, technology, and digital is such a vast area and so many kind of aspects of it and sub sectors, if you like, do you kind of have a way of pulling in the right person at the right time with different skill sets? Or is it just more the space to kind of think through and problem solve?
Ed Howarth 7:06
Yeah, I think the programme as well as having these community business connectors and digital leads to work through with the organisations sort of to build that space, obviously resourcing as is where you can get space and time. So they will get access to a flexible grant, which can be used for to help participate in the programme help backfill. And then also access to a technical budget that they can draw down on, which helps, which they use in partnership with the connector and the digital lead to really find the right person at the right moment in the journey. And also for us as a funder to be very, very flexible, understanding that this isn't a linear process, and that other priorities other urgent priorities come in. So it might be a forwards and a bit of a loop back and then continuing on.
Being flexible as a funder and trusting the community business and the process to go at the pace that's the right pace for the community business, and to allow them to bring in different skills and also to pivot when things when they find out things on on that journey that they were heading in one direction and they may need to change direction due to circumstances changing.
Annie Legge 8:19
Yeah. And that's just given now to be constant change, isn't it? Can you give an example maybe or just the types of support the digital leads are kind of advising? Or you gave us a couple of Bristol based examples? What types of digital change or digital developments that they might be doing?
Ed Howarth 8:41
It's quite a broad range. On our first round, it was the 21 community businesses in the cohort. And it ranged from setting up and establishing customer relationship management systems. CRM needs come up a lot, often, often not always, what's what is ending up to be the thing that's developed, but there have been some, some CRMs developed, mainly related to some of their business. So it was a LGBTQI organisation, that we're delivering services around diversity courses for organisations in the community they're in and they needed a way to manage the kind of workflow of getting leads getting people onto the course is registering payment, all of that work. So kind of very practical part of their income businesses. And on other cases, it's been a sort of more traditional social media marketing, Marcomms and web development. And in other cases, I think other forms of data management. I know some of the city farms in Bristol, we're looking at a data management system that helps support their volunteers to do their work to support understanding of users to the Community Farm, uses of their services. So all of that kind of which I guess is can be linked into social impact monitoring.
Annie Legge 10:06
I think that's where you're having that sort of digital specialisms as well that you can draw on is so fundamental, because even those examples you just gave, like require really different skill sets and experience. And it's complicated. And it's changing all the time. That's what we often say, when particularly more of the charity clients like, Well, I still don't you know, I don't know, and I don't know how to make the right choices and decisions. But I think it's always like that, because it's always changing.
I'm interested, obviously, you you talk about Power to Change giving grants and supporting the community businesses, I guess, how does digital kind of feature from an internal perspective within within Power to Change? Is that something that you I guess, have a bit more of a, maybe a digital specialists or digital learning programmes that you might have internally, I'm just interested from you as a funder as well, how you how you kind of manage digital within your organisation?
Ed Howarth 11:00
Yeah, no, so interesting point. And I think a lot of the challenges that I'm learning about from the digital leads, and the community business connectors, working with community businesses, Power to Change suffers from the same pain points, as a lot of community businesses do. We don't have dedicated resource to digital transformation work. So that requires understanding. So that's one area where I think I've learned a lot as an organisation and I think, the mindset of an organisation becoming digital, that has been a learning journey for me.
Whereas I think when I first started at Power to Change about four years ago, you often design the programme, then think about the tool to to fit the programme or the process to fit the programme. And what we've been very luckily and fortunate with Powering Up with this programme working on we've we've kind of been working through Airtable, which is not the product that paths change users, Power to Change is a Salesforce organisation. But due to needing to open fast and start to operate quickly, because we're post pandemic, we knew that the support was needed. And we knew that the the kind of the way we were designing the programme was going to be very iterative. So we developed, I guess, what was started as a minimum viable product in Airtable, and then grew.
I think, and we've learned a lot because we we don't have those skills. And I think we've learned a lot of lessons and quite tough lessons about how you how you go about developing systems, digital systems, when you're working within organisations, and then how you integrate those into data management. I think what Power to Change is very good at is managing its data. But maybe understanding the human interaction with systems is the bit where I think it takes a lot more work and a lot more skill sets that, that maybe we're learning and still learning. So it's been an interesting journey, I'd say quite Yeah, not dissimilar to all the organisations we work with where we're, we're on very much a learning curve on that as well.
Annie Legge 13:12
Yeah, and I guess digital will be. And those platforms will be central to what you do when you're coordinating allocation of grants. And, you know, obviously, a lot of support that goes into these organisations as well. And there's a kind of capacity management aspect to that. So, yeah, and I love what you said around that mindset of becoming digital takes time. Because Absolutely, it does, but recognising that that's the journey you're on is kind of the first hurdle, I think.
Ed Howarth 13:39
Yeah, definitely. And, and there is no endpoint really. So it's always keeping open and learning and receiving feedback and insights, how team a team or working with a system or people are working with a system and, and trying to manage how you support them to understand the system without creating, what you can do in Airtable is create something that becomes quite unwieldy, because it's so easy to change. So its beauty becomes its kind of its beast at the same time.
Annie Legge 14:10
So often we hear that we just hear that actually, we just want the technology to work. And then that's job done. But actually it isn't, is it because the tool constantly tools get updated all the time? How often do we hear someone say Sorry, I'm late for the call zoom was just updating. So yeah, it's an ongoing journey.
But what I'd love to talk to you about as the second part of our conversation is around Tech for Good Southwest and the Tech for Good community. And because you and I met a long time ago, actually when you were leading the Tech for Good Bristol group, and we'd set up myself and Cat had set up a Tech for Good bath group and then then we obviously merged together and ran the community together for a while. So I'd be interested first around your journey into why you launched a tech for good Bristol group.
Ed Howarth 14:56
Yeah, so I'm not a tech person, which is where I start I've always been involved in kind of organisational development supporting voluntary community and social enterprise sector in Bristol was where I was working at the time when I kind of first thought about it, and I think it came from. I was at Voscur, I saw this data, open data session going on in Manchester. And I was thinking about how data can be used better by the voluntary sector in terms of understanding need, using the data that's out there. And at that time, open data was probably bigger than I knew it was.
But in terms of how you access data about local need, and ONS data around kind of where potential services should be positioned, and how to understand where those services might be most beneficial in communities. It felt like there was a gap. And I often saw duplication of services with people going "I see a problem in my community", I'm going to with goodwill in very good intention, and also great sort of motivation to help people in that community and the fact that there was no open or data available to find out what else was going on and what what were the pressing challenges of those communities.
So I managed to go on this event up in Manchester and met some open data people who is a new, completely new world to me, an engaging bunch of kind of people understood data and different code language I never heard of like Python, and R and all of these things. So I was about my depths. And I was one of the few people who was from the voluntary and community and social enterprise sector. And I was like, there's definitely something here, but I don't know what it is. And then when I got back to my job in Bristol, I got in touch with Open Data, Bristol, I think and think Catherine Rooney. And Jen. And I said, maybe there's something that we could put a sort of experimental workshop on, see whether voluntary sector might be interested in learning about how to use data, or what is it about technology that might support them.
And it was there that Jen (Williams) and Helen (Woodcock), we all met. And then we were like, maybe there's something here, maybe we can start Tech for Good. Bristol. And we knew that was some sort of seed funding to help set up the meetup group. And it kind of started from that point on started very ritzy, very kind of bringing people together in spaces before that was hard to do. And then obviously, that you're one of those events, and then kind of expanded into technical southwest, which, which made a lot more sense.
Annie Legge 17:31
And what were your hopes and dreams around setting up that community at the beginning? I think it feels like it was very organic. And are there things that we can convene around and pull people together to help support them with knowledge and skills? Is that kind of where you just sort of seeing how it went? Or did you have a particular vision for it at the time?
Ed Howarth 17:55
I think at the time, it was kind of like, well, there's a gap here. And there are those organisations that are serving communities and working on really tough challenges within communities across Bristol.
They were disadvantaged by not accessing systems and did or access to knowledge about systems and tools that could make their make the doing of their jobs much easier. So they could do more of the doing and less of the kind of administrating. And so it was kind of based on so many ways that they can make their work more straightforward, and allow them to do more with the small resources they have.
So I guess it was kind of exploratory and, what are the needs out there and they often range from, we've got laptops that are corrupted, and we don't even have the kit in the organisation, which is often kind of fundamentals. Then I guess, over time of moving beyond that was kind of like, how can we sort of get people in a room together to make connections and start their own kind of relationships that help? I guess, the tech world and the voluntary and community sector world kind of mingle a bit and share experiences and learning. And I think there's lots of learning that I've had from working with people who work in the digital world that I would have never imagined I would have learned. And it's helped change my thinking around service design for for voluntary and community sector work, kind of how you design services based on some of the stuff that is done in a digital world. I can't speak for the other side, but I think there's a lot of mutual learning that can happen on both sides.
Annie Legge 19:40
I totally hear that in terms of that opportunity for people to mingle and share experiences has been one of the fundamental ways in which these this community particularly has that impact. I guess one of the challenges that we've seen over the years and I think it's even harder now is the capacity stretch of charities, community business type organisations to actually find the space and time to physically come and also online as well to these types of events. Is that something that you've noticed as well? And do you think there's a solution to that? Because otherwise, it just becomes a little bit of an echo chamber in terms of these are things we'd love to do to support the sector, or charities if you like, but actually, they're not here to hear their voices and be part of the conversation either.
Ed Howarth 20:31
Yes, definitely a challenge. And what I experienced kind of on the sort of foundational level was that those working in the tech sector, networking, kind of meetups, that world was a very familiar world and a very, I guess, beneficial world, both personally and professionally.
I think that's a slightly different cultural worlds to the social economy and the social sort of voluntary sector because that resource to kind of, I guess, do that networking is often limited due to the nature of the work and their nature of the incentives for doing that type of work, because it's a bit speculative.
I also think there's a there's a real gap in terms of, of understanding that digital is, is part of our world and part of an organisation, but not in the sense of a product, in sense of we need to think digitally, because that is the world that is now upon us. And I think it's often the resources aren't there. So it seemed like, well, we can make do with what we've got. And it seems to be taking away resources from the frontline. So I think it's kind of seen as well, that'd be nice, but it's not priority right now. And I think that in the long term, or probably even now is putting the sector at disadvantage, and meaning that the resources they've got are being further stretched, because it's kind of in a loop that's not allowing them to, to use those resources to their maximum because they aren't given the opportunity to, to embrace and start to develop a more digital mindset to help them with the work they do.
Annie Legge 22:20
Most practical skills as well, I think. We've talked about this before, but you know, there's obviously a real lack of funding across the the charity sector, the nonprofit sector, particularly, which is even more stretched now, and organisations are at capacity and teams are overstretched, and all of this, which makes it really hard, as you say, to actually then lift yourself out of that, and actually, for example, go to a networking event and learn about something to do with digital.
But then, on the other hand, what these types of communities hope to do is provide that space and that access to potentially volunteers, there's kind of learning spaces and actually a bit of a peer learning space to kind of see how other charities might be experiencing similar challenges. I think that's one thing, certainly from my perspective, that we're constantly experimenting on to find ways in which to kind of share and disseminate knowledge, but also access to resources and capacity, but recognise that actually, you know, it's difficult for people to get out and to take that time and space to attend events and sessions.
Ed Howarth 23:32
Yeah, definitely. And I think funders have a role to play in all of this. That's me speaking, I guess, as a funder. And it's, I think we funders underestimate the power of peer to peer connections, and how they are probably some of the most influential connections that happen in change within organisations. Obviously, have resources are good and funding is good. But time after time, every time Power to Change does a programme that involves peer to peer learning element to it. That's the bit that comes through strongly. It doesn't talk people don't talk about the money they talk about. I've developed a really strong relationships with these organisations who have seen have helped me see something in a different way. I've helped them see something in a different way. And actually, that's the bit people talk about, and essentially what the Tech for Good network is, is a forum for that to happen on a geographical basis rather than a sector basis.
Annie Legge 24:32
And that's one of the challenges, isn't it? And we've we've talked about it in the past as we've been organising the network, but particularly now, how do you actually really demonstrate the value of those connections, of that convening? We know it has deep impact because it's the stories that people share," oh, I met that person at that event. And it's amazing. We're doing this now", or that's led to a different way of thinking. So there's definitely still work to do to kind of I think more advocacy around the role of these communities.
But what would your hopes be now for the Tech for Good Southwest community, you've obviously supported and volunteered in the past and always a supporter in terms of our events and the work that we're doing. But thinking about Bristol Bath, this particular region, what are your hopes for Tech for Good Southwest? And the impact and benefit it could potentially have?
Ed Howarth 25:29
I think it's got a lot of potential. I mean, not only that is a guess, and I don't know. So I'm not in the tech world, but it's becoming has been in for a while become a sense of digital skills. I mean, it's what is it the Avon gorge or something, or Avon Valley so I'd say that's the probably the post University or university skills that are coming through, which is why tech companies are basing themselves here as well as probably quality of life and flexible working.
So that side of it, that sort of the supply side of all those people willing to engage with the sector is probably there and is waiting to be sort of energised. And we know that that that's not the hard part of it, getting those the tech side, it feels like it's the advocacy piece, and the funder piece to support digital journeys in whatever shape or form they might be, and maybe develop some good champions within the sector. And that requires time and resourcing, but some people who have have gone through their own digital journey and kind of seen that it changes not only their ability to do what they do, but also their kind of thinking around how they deliver services and what they do. So trying to find some of those examples.
And also getting people back together again, and in spaces and connecting, I think that's why I always used to come away from those events that were at that time, in the Watershed, when Bristol energy was going around. In those spaces always coming away feeling quite energised. And kind of it was it's a unique type of energy that you only get when you're connecting and finding out about worlds that you don't necessarily know much about, which I didn't know at the time at all. And it opened up that world. I guess I've become quite a lot more involved in digital organisations and trying to understand digital more as a result of being involved in Tech for Good.
Annie Legge 27:40
What you mentioned then, that's definitely always been the beauty for me is that actually, there's so so many different roles represented different types of sectors represented that come together to these types of communities, which on the one hand, seem a little bit broad, and actually, where's my place in that, but on the other hand, actually, you've all come because you've got a shared interest and purpose broadly, you just might have a kind of specialist area that you're interested in.
I'm definitely noticing, probably particularly in the last six months, there seems to be a bit of a surge of I don't know whether it's a lot more, you know, online working amongst the tech sector, people working from home that there tends to be like a sort of need to work more hyper locally and actually get involved with local initiatives and support their own communities, which I think it's really exciting. It's how do we activate and mobilise this, the amazing tech skills, as you say that we have across the region, to get involved with local initiatives? So definitely work to do.
I've got a final question for you, which is quite broad. But considering our conversation today, I'd love for you to give us a sort of definition of what Tech for Good means to you.
Ed Howarth 28:51
It's a tricky one, because I think it may well, for one, it means so many different things to different people from kind of, especially in Bristol, I know there's kind of robotics that helping people who are living with disabilities through to kind of volunteering with a local community business or local organisation. So I think for me, where I came at, tech for good from was less about the tech and more about the people and how those people who have skills and knowledge in one area can help impart those to support another organisation and where that is also reciprocal.
I know that any tech volunteer has gone to work with an organisation to help with, say, SEO or I'm using words I don't even know the meaning of - but things where they've actually probably got more out of that experience then the optimisation of a website for a charity.
So I think it for me, it starts with the people and how you can get people to connect across different sectors and learn about different ways of doing things and I think if you acehive that via a meet up, I think that's a great impact. And then let those impacts kind of filtered through into wherever they want them to be. So it's just trying to create space for people to connect and not be overly ambitious. And let those connections turn into things that become practical and useful for people for whatever they might want them to be.
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